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Our View of Kingswood School
With its impressive sporting reputation, excellent academic results and top-billing arts, Kingswood is the epitome of a polymath school. Support for busy families is a big part of the ethos and, with the prep school on the same stunning campus overlooking Bath, it’s a compelling all-through option, with excellent senior boarding school facilities from Year 7.
Where is Kingswood School?
Sitting in an elevated position overlooking beautiful Bath, Kingswood Senior School is about 30 minutes by foot from the city centre – not that you’d know it. Surrounded by parkland, the 123-acre campus, which is home to the prep and the senior schools, feels wonderfully secluded. Founded by John Wesley in 1748, it’s the world’s oldest Methodist educational institution and boasts elegant Georgian buildings. The main Kingswood school building is stunning, with the corridors’ beautiful quarry tiles still intact. In the original physics lecture room, they still have the old wooden benches and you can imagine teachers sweeping in wearing gowns and mortarboards. Classrooms are large and airy; the library is in what was the first-ever classroom at Kingswood and has an impressive stained-glass window at one end.
More recent additions are sympathetic as well as practical, and the whole place feels very well designed. The majority of sports pitches are a five- to 10-minute walk away, and there’s an on-site swimming pool and Astros that are shared with the prep school.
There’s no denying Bath’s traffic challenges, but staggered pick-up times help parents navigate parking and, for those who come from further afield, it’s on the right side of town for the M4, which is about 20 minutes’ drive away. Bath Spa station is a 15-minute drive, and there is also a minibus service for those who travel by train, as well as four other bus routes.
School headmaster
Warm and passionate, Andrew Gordon-Brown took up the reins in 2020 and is clearly well liked by his charges – one of whom is his daughter, who is a pupil here. After a career in banking and finance, he pivoted into education in 2003 and, before arriving at Kingswood School in Bath, he was head at Truro School in Cornwall for eight years, following stints at Stonyhurst College and Radley.
Admissions process
Most pupils join Kingswood School in Year 7, with about two candidates competing for every place. About 60 to 70 come from the prep school, plus an additional 55 from state, other independent schools or internationally. All prospective pupils are assessed in English, maths and non-verbal reasoning. Places in the extra class that is added in Year 9 are also hotly contested, with about 50 applications for the 20 spaces. At this entry point, preferential treatment is given to boarders and scholars. Pupils applying for a Year 9 place also sit a foreign language and science test. Year 12 applicants are offered a place based on an interview, predicted grades and a current school report and reference.
Academics and destinations
Class sizes at Kingswood Senior School are a maximum of 24, dropping down to 12 to 14 in the sixth form.
Year 7s take two modern foreign languages, one of which they can drop to take up Latin or Mandarin. They also have art, drama, D&T and music timetabled on a carousel. From Year 9, maths and English are set. About 15 per cent of pupils have
SEN and are offered one-to-one lessons, for which parents are charged.
At GCSE, there’s a choice of 20 subjects, while there are 23 on offer at A-level, with pupils refreshingly unrestricted by set blocks. Among the most popular subjects are maths, science, economics and psychology, and most start with three instead of taking four and then dropping one – Mr Gordon-Brown believes that the extra time is better used for enrichment activities. Most pupils do an
EPQ and are free to follow their own interests; one boy did his on ultramarathons.
Sixth-formers have their own purpose-built centre where they are assigned their own study area. The centre is slated for a refurb and, if it’s anything like the newly renovated café, they’re in for a treat. The school has been astute in creating social spaces to prepare pupils for life after school – one sixth-former told us that not only did he feel he was being taught to pass A-levels, he was also getting an education for life at Kingswood.
Most leavers head off to
Russell Group universities (about 70 per cent) and each year a few get a place at Oxbridge. Recently there has been more interest in attending US universities too.
Co-curricular
Kingswood is widely considered one of the top sporting schools in the South West, with many pupils competing at national and international level, and close links to Bath Rugby and Bath University’s sporting department bolstering the offering for the most talented athletes (ex-England and Bath rugby player Matt Banahan is currently on the staff roll). Traditional term sports are played: rugby, hockey and cricket for the boys; hockey, netball and cricket for the girls.
The three-storey art department is amazing, with work on show that would rival that of an art college. D&T is equally impressive; on our visit, we saw Year 8s making pizza cutters, and pupils also create Bluetooth speakers, lamps and miniature Formula One cars.
The arts get top billing too, with a non-stop roster of drama productions, concerts, festivals, exhibitions and professional masterclasses staged throughout the year. One of Mr Gordon-Brown’s goals is to make Kingswood School excellent in all areas, and he recently carried out a musical audit to improve the department – not that it’s not fantastic already. As well as 20 different instrument lessons, pupils can join a jazz orchestra, a chamber choir, string and woodwind groups and lead the Christmas concerts. A new head of drama has introduced LAMDA and aims to involve every year group in an annual performance – recent productions have included Lord of the Flies, Matilda and Antigone.
There are more than 100 co-curricular activities at this Bath senior – ranging from kayaking to scriptwriting – for pupils to sink their teeth into.
Boarding
Most of the 200 boarders are full-time, but there are weekly and flexi options too. Many are children with parents serving in the armed forces children and there’s about a 50:50 split of boys and girls, and UK and international boarders. Houses are mixed with day pupils in Years 9 to 13 (brilliant wraparound care means day pupils can stay for supper and homework as and when they wish), which means there’s excellent integration. Dorms are nicely decorated, and there are kitchens for baking and games rooms to socialise in – we had a peep in one house that resembled a smart London hotel with its modernist curves and glass balustrades.
Weekends at Kingswood Senior are fun-packed, with hiking, whitewater rafting or shopping trips into Bath. Pupils are a sociable bunch, and there are lots of friendships across the year groups – one of our pupil guides told us they all prefer to watch films together rather than sit in their rooms on their phones.
School community
The school’s understanding that pupils need social spaces is part and parcel of the pastoral care here. There are lots of sitting areas and games rooms, as well as the boarding houses for day pupils and boarders alike. On top of this every pupil has a house tutor, houseparent and head of year. There are good links with parents, who are an unpretentious bunch, as well as plenty of community outreach, with tea parties to support the elderly and other schools making use of the swimming pool.
And finally....
A wonderfully pupil-centric school where everyone is encouraged to give everything a go and find their passion. The knockout location offers everything you could ask for, with Bath’s city centre just a short walk away, and excellent boarding facilities and wraparound care for day pupils make it a smart choice for two-working-parent families.